Anna Kurishima
Anna Kurishima (栗島安奈 Kurishima Anna) is a character appearing in the "Arctic Ghost" arc of the manga. She is the daughter of the Neo Black Ghost member Julia Manoda, and travels with the 00 Cyborgs to the North Pole to confront her estranged mother on her involvement in the recent worldwide oil crisis. Appearance Anna is a young woman with long, light hair. She dresses in a belted bodysuit with a rose pattern on the chest. Personality History Sometime after Dr. Gilmore and the 00 Cyborgs had escaped from Black Ghost, Gilmore's former colleague Julia Manoda grew vengeful at his betrayal and set out to search for him. While attempting to track him down in Japan, she had a brief affair with a Japanese man and would give birth to a daughter nine months later, dropping her off at an orphanage as she continued her search. Anna would be brought up by the Kurishima family, believing her birth mother to have died until she had received a mysterious letter from her mother that would be tracked to the North Pole. She contacted Dr. Gilmore, who had received a challenge from the same source at Neo Black Ghost, who had caused an energy crisis by causing oil to become solidified. On their trip to the North Pole, Anna learned of her mother's history, in that she was a scientist in the WWII era who had been recruited by the Nazis to develop a hydrogen bomb. After the war, she had become a professor of physics in the United States, but would eventually go missing, with her last being seen in Alaska in the summer of 1970. In actuality, that was when her mother was recruited for Black Ghost's 00 cyborg project. Upon her reunion with her mother and having her handcuffs removed, Anna angrily shot at her mother for having abandoned her. This caused Julia's mask to be knocked off and reveal that it had been horrifically scarred on one side, due to an accident with gunpowder that occurred in her childhood. While Dr. Gilmore had surgically repaired her face after they had met, the results of the surgery would fade away over the years as they had their disagreements and falling-out over his rebellion, with Julia's face having become scarred once again. Feeling conflicted over her mother's past and torn between her loyalty to her mother and the 00 Cyborg team, Anna shot herself in the chest. Julia, despairing over the death of her daughter, gave the team instructions on how to return the oil to its normal state. She then set her base to self-destruct, opting to die with her daughter. Notes *Although the exact amount of time that passed between the end of the original Black Ghost organization and the rise of Neo Black Ghost isn't quite stated, Anna's apparent age and the fact that she was born shortly after the 00 Cyborgs' rebellion from Black Ghost would indicate that the timeframe of the Weekly Shonen Sunday run would have to take place several years later. This is solidified by the year in the story being noted as "198x", indicating a vague point in the 1980s. This is also complicated some by the soft retconning that takes place with the 00 cyborgs' rebellion, suggesting that it happened in the early 1970s rather than the 1960s. Thus, Anna would have had to have been born then. *It has long been speculated by fans, but never confirmed by any actual word, that Anna may have originally been intended to be Dr. Gilmore's daughter, with Ishinomori's editor either rejecting the idea or Ishinomori himself opting to go with a less predictable outcome. As it stands, Anna would be the third half-Japanese character to be shown in the manga, after Joe and Mary (from the Yomi arc) and favoring her mother's looks. Category:Manga Characters Category:Female characters Category:Humans Category:Deceased Characters